Voltaire on Iron-douches and mega-training weeks

So I'm reading Voltaire's Candide. It sounds heavier than it is. If you have an afternoon and are feeling philosophical with a tinge of cynicism I say have at it.

One line struck me as being descriptive of certain Iron-distance competitors and their spectators: "Have they always been liars, cheats, traitors, brigands, weak, flighty, cowardly, envious, gluttonous, drunken, grasping, and vicious, bloody, backbiting, debauched, fanatical, hypocritical, and silly?"

Perhaps I'm still stinging from the umbrella jabs in the eyes at Ironman Lake Placid with nary an "excuse me".

The main thrust of Candide, revealed at the end, and please excuse this spoiler if you were just about to pick up your copy that the college bookstore wouldn't take back because of the excessive yellow highlighting, is that we need something to keep ourselves occupied physically in order to keep our minds off of the miserable human condition. We need to tend our gardens, so to speak, in Voltairease, so our brains don't wander and lock onto difficult and heavy philosophizing, causing cerebral implosion. Have you ever seen a bimbo or himbo watch Jeopardy?

Now I'm not quite as acerbic as Voltaire (I'm only 41 so give me some more life to live) to give an either "distracting inquietude" or a "lethargic disgust" choice on life but I do tend to my garden to lighten the load on the ol' thinkin' cap. My garden happens to be triathlon.

I find that a 20-hour training week does wonders for forgetting about mortality and possible after-lives. Will I come back in the next life as a dung beetle? During halves and full iron-distance races I'm reduced to just worrying about ingesting food and going as fast as I can to reach some sort of shelter. Sounds like Voltaire was on to something. I'm having an existential crisis right now so I'm going to jump on the trainer and do some intervals at FTP--that oughta cure me.